How does an individual reach the ripe old age of one hundred years and not enough to fill a page is known about her life. Such is the case with Maria Dick, who celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of her birth yesterday, Saturday, March 4, 2000.
Sheila Ragbir has lived opposite to the centenarian in Barataria for fifty four years, and is to-day, with her husband Leslie, looking after Maria's care at Norma Sorzano's Cantaro Geriatric Home in Santa Cruz, but although Ragbir has known Maria from childhood, she can say very little about a life which has spanned one hundred years.
" I know that she lived in San Fernando before coming to Barataria. I believe that she worked as a post mistress in her early life. Her husband, Arthur Dick, passed away 17 years ago. He was Guyanese and worked at Chaguaramas."
Maria had no children of her own, but is the adopted mother of Junior Superville, who lives in Texas. It was not possible to find out more about this very private woman's life as she is now senile, but remains physically well, and according to Ragbir "doesn't even need glasses, it's only her hearing that is impaired."
"Maria never spoke too much about her life" says Ragbir "but always said her mother's name was Elizabeth Celestine; she never knew her father."
Ragbir remembers Maria being a churchgoing woman who attended the Malick Roman Catholic Church. "She walked to the San Juan market everyday and maybe it is this exercise that has kept her physically fit at 100 years."
Maria was a woman who looked after her needs, sewing for herself, and generally looking after her Barataria home, until it became necessary six years ago to have her placed in a home, when she could no longer live on her own.